What the HELL has happened to Young The Giant?<\/p>\n
As I sit here writing this, doped up on Vicodin after an attack of kidney stones, I wonder how such a great band got so bland. The California band\u2019s last record, 2014\u2019s Mind Over Matter<\/i>, was one of the best discs of the year, full of great songs and a really great mellow vibe. While this record shows the band deciding to experiment and stretching their musical muscle a bit, aside from a few tracks, it\u2019s one of the biggest duds of 2016.<\/p>\n
Lead single \u201cAmerika\u201d is a great song, harkening back to what drew me to the band in the first place: great melodies and, of course, Sameer Gadhia\u2019s awe-inspiring vocals. Unfortunately, the rest of the record doesn\u2019t quite hit the same heights.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething To Believe In\u201d is a slow jam that doesn\u2019t go anywhere. It just falls flat and doesn\u2019t have the same \u2018it factor\u2019 that made \u201cCough Syrup\u201d and \u201cApartment\u201d so damn catchy. \u201cElsewhere\u201d is a damn dance track, something I didn\u2019t really want from a band like this. When did they start trying to sound like Fun. or Panic At The Disco? Oh, that\u2019s right, when they signed to Fueled By Ramen, where they make every band sound radio-ready and squeaky clean to sell to the kids at Hot Topic. Only \u201cTitus Was Born\u201d is as close as the band gets to their former glory, a song that makes them sound like their old selves.<\/p>\n
\u201cJungle Youth\u201d sounds like bland alt rock from the early 2000s. It\u2019s been done before. There\u2019s really nothing here that grabs the listener like \u201cCamera\u201d or \u201cTeachers,\u201d and that\u2019s a sad state of affairs for such a great group. \u201cRepeat\u201d sounds like a track that would do great on college radio right alongside Imagine Dragons or Bastille, but this isn\u2019t the Young The Giant I fell in love with.<\/p>\n
\u201cArt Exhibit\u201d is the only other decent track, but it leads into \u201cNothing\u2019s Over,\u201d another damn dance track. I\u2019m all for stretching out creatively, but in today\u2019s environment, we barely have enough real alternative rock bands left, and now we\u2019ve lost another one to damn keyboards. Leave the keyboard stuff to Neon Trees, X Ambassadors, Grouplove, and all these other generic bands with multiple producers and songwriters. Give us REAL alternative rock again, PLEASE!!<\/p>\n
Ultimately, my hopes weren\u2019t very high for this record once I heard \u201cSomething To Believe In,\u201d and those expectations were lowered even more because this is just one of the most bitterly disappointing records I\u2019ve heard in a good long while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8673],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-44598","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-young-the-giant","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44598"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}